Pupil Premium

The Staff and Academy Council of Oasis Academy Blakenhale Junior are committed to ensuring that the teaching and learning opportunities provided in school meet the needs of all pupils so that all make excellent progress and achieve their potential.

Background - What is Pupil Premium?

The Government believes that the Pupil Premium, which is additional to main Academy funding, is the best way to address the current underlying inequalities between children eligible for free school meals {FSM} and their wealthier peers by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most.

The Pupil Premium is allocated to children from low-income families who are currently known to be eligible for FSM in both mainstream and non-mainstream settings and children who have been looked after continuously for more than six months.

The Government decided that eligibility for the Pupil Premium in 2012-13 would be extended to pupils who have been elgible for free school meals {FSM} at any point in the last 6 years. As a group nationally, children who have been eligible for FSM at any point in time have consistently lower educational attainment than those who have never been eligible for FSM.

A premium has also been introduced for children whose parents are currently serving in the armed forces.

Pupil Premium is spent within the context of the overall funding agreement between the DfE and Oasis Community Learning.

Our school welcomes and shares the government’s aim of tackling all forms of disadvantage and works tirelessly to ensure inclusion and equal access for all learners. We recognise that the pupil premium funding is allocated to children in receipt of free school meals and is a means of addressing some of the issues associated with social disadvantage and in particular, in narrowing and hopefully eventually closing, any gap in attainment. In making appropriate provision for this we also acknowledge that not all pupils in receipt of free school meals are socially disadvantaged. We also recognise that that not all pupils who are socially disadvantaged are registered or qualify for free school meals.